For goods which are to be positioned by a slicing machine and after slicing are deposited in the form of a plurality of decorative slices, the price per unit weight must be keyed in or fed to a scale to determine the weight-proportional retail price.
The process must be repeated about twenty times per commercial length of wurst or sausage to fully market the product which is purchased in portions.
The piece price or price per unit weight can be taken and/or directly determined from a label present on the goods by a bar code reader. However the goods must be manually moved once or twice past a bar code reader.
A computer scale is described in U.S. Patent 3 962 569 which has a reader available for inputting of price information. The inputting of this information is effected by a card which is sensed photoelectrically. The operation of this system is problematical and gives rise to errors because on the one hand the goods and on the other hand the correct card must be selected and the goods must be placed on the scale or weighing device and the card must be pushed into the reader. Placing the bar code on the goods is better because confusion between the goods and the price per unit weight is then avoided. It is however necessary in practice when the code is applied directly on the goods to move the goods past the reader many times so that prior to and independently of the cutting operation an accurate reading may reliably be effected.